The Alaska Department of Fish & Game has released their 2015 Upper Cook Inlet Commercial Fishing Outlook. Management Biologist Pat Shields said they’re predicting an average run.
Shields: “The forecast for sockeye salmon, the total run is about 5.8 million and that’s a pretty average run for sockeye here in Cook Inlet. Once you take away what we need for escapement, there’s probably about 3.5 to 4 million fish that will be available for harvest to the personal use fishery, sport fishery, commercial fishery. That’s just about an average run.”
The forecast for late run Kenai River Kings is close to 22,000 fish, above the minimum escapement goal, which will likely grant in-river and set net fishermen some time in the water.
Shields: “As people have heard, the clam fishery has been closed this year on the east side of Cook Inlet and the early run of kings to begin with is going to start out closed in the Kenai River. So we’ll start out the season a little slow and we’ll see and everybody have their fingers crossed. Hopefully kings will return at better than forecast. By the time we get done with the early run and get into July, we’ll kind of have an idea when we get into that late run what might happen, based on what we saw in the early run.”